Chapter Twenty: Suddenly Important

When they were trying to drain her dry, the monks at the old abbey had mentioned something about Val carrying the blood of the 'ancient line'. At the time, she'd been pretty panicked but, even if she hadn't been, she probably would have dismissed it as just another example of the religious mumbo-jumbo that the Pale Order were known for. Or at least that she associated with them. In retrospect, it had probably meant something. It meant that she had the blood of queens in her veins.

It made a lot more sense that the Pale Order would want to get at that (and get at her) than that they had a hankering for unusually-potent orphan's blood. And it made sense that the Duke of Aurilicht (and his mom) might be worried that Val would want to use her regal heritage to upend the duchy. Especially when she had completely accidentally nudged the two nations to the brink of war. Oops.

Fortunately, Mrs. Eatherfine, who was the dowager duchess, was a bit less inclined to kill children… young women… than the Pale Order. In fact, she thought Val being alive was a wonderful thing, indeed, as long as Val was on their side. Which Val was - and Mrs. Eatherfine was very eager, also indeed, to put that in writing.

"You're not trying to trick me into signing my blood over?" Val asked the duke's notary.

She glanced to Mrs. Eatherfine for guidance, and the duchess shook her head. "The contract means exactly as it says, Miss Vinzenno," the notary said. "You endorse Duke Ansibald of Aurilicht and recognize his right of succession, should the Regency Council ever be dissolved. Since you are already a legal subject of the duchy, your rights and responsibilities under this contract are no different from those of any other subject beyond your endorsement of his right to kingship."

Val wiggled the quill around in her hand. It was, by a wide margin, the finest quill she'd ever scrawled anything with. "So… this contract says that I think the duke gets to be king if anybody gets to be king?"

The notary and Mrs. Eatherfine both nodded.

"That doesn't sound so bad," Val said, and she signed her name right in the big blank space. She signed it Valkyrie Valicent-Vinzenno, because everybody seemed to think Valicent was her middle name, but she didn't have a middle name like some posh lordling. It was really the first part of her last name. That was how Priestess Oestel had explained things worked when you were welcomed into a new family and you welcomed them right back, at least according to tradition.

"It's not on the contract, but I do have a favor to request of you, Valkyrie," Mrs. Eatherfine added.

Val was astute enough to know that a dowager duchess's request was not a request. She pocketed the super fancy quill, hoping nobody would object - and they didn't - and waited for the bad news to come. Surely, bad news was worth one super fancy quill?

"Val, you're a lovely young woman, but your courtly manners are atrocious. As somebody who may be called upon to support your duke and proclaim your loyalty, it will not do to come across as common. Be yourself all you like - I find a little frank roughness endearing. But I must insist that you learn how to act and speak like a proper lady…"

"I'd like that," Val said quickly. Blending in was what she did, and learning how to act like a posh nob would no doubt help with that. "How?"

"We'll find you a tutor - there are no shortages of proper ladies here in the duke's court - and you'll come here twice a week as your schedule permits. And I shall keep apprised of your progress, so there'll be no slacking off."

"I don't do slacking off, duchess," Val said.

Three days later, a courier arrived with a list of possible times for Val to select, and the courier arrived with a tailor, of all people, who took Val's measurements and asked her questions about what she liked in an outfit.

"Hardened leather," Val said, tapping on her favorite jacket.

"In a gown, miss," the tailor clarified.

"Oh!"

Val had all sorts of ideas on that, too. She showed the tailor her first ever proper dress, which was still her favorite, and the tailor visibly scoffed. True, it was slightly shabby from being worn outside in the winter and a bit tight because Val had grown, but it wasn't that bad. Val usually wore breeches, boots, and her jacket because they kept out the cold. In warmer weather, she'd be back to wearing more skirts. She asked the tailor whether she could tidy up her velveteen jacket and let it out so it wasn't so tight.

"Why not just get a new ensemble, miss?"

"Because I’m not made of money, miss," Val said.

"The dowager duchess has commissioned me to complete five gowns for you - two formal and three semiformal. You won't pay a pfennig for them."

"Oh?" Val's eyebrows went up. "Then I've definitely got some ideas. And I want six outfits if I'm going to be hobnobbing in court."

For her sixth outfit, of course, Val wanted the finest leather jacket she could get, the finest breeches, and the finest silver-buckled boots. And a silver-buckled leather cap, too. The kind the women soldiers had worn back in the great war that looked almost like pirate caps. If she was going to spend time in the duke's court, she would spend her whole time there dressed properly, but that didn't mean she was going to dress like a delicate flower. Sometimes, you had to dress like a tough, stab-resistant flower.

The training times for Val's finishing classes took up one day's window for wandering around with Iselde and Nikoli and one day's block for studying with Gus and Beni. She wasn't sure which she disliked, because she enjoyed both. But at least all of Val's fighting classes were still a go. She would have felt bad about going back on her word about keeping everything clean and organized after class, and she had to run all the way back from her afternoon classes in the palace to get to fighting classes at Sabine's on time to do setup.

Val snorted. Finishing classes. That was the word for them. Like she was a lump of unsculpted clay in need of a master's cultivating touch. Apparently, lots of posh girls had them. In fact, she wasn't the only young lady getting them in the palace. In fact, she got off on the wrong foot with everybody immediately because the schedule for everybody else had been set by Val's time preferences.

"What's the point of having tea in the late afternoon?" Miss Tiffany Salvice snorted. "What are we, Ostrogrovs?"

"What's wrong with Ostrogrovs?" Val asked. She remembered that Penny was learning about that culture… "They greet one another by kissing on the cheeks. It's…"

"Exactly. It's boorish," Miss Beaucinia Velvantz chimed in. "Better for everybody if they all just sank through a hole in the bottom of the ocean."

"It's a landlocked country," Val noted. "And I don't think there are holes in the bottom of the ocean…"

"Matter of speech, Miss Valerie," Miss Tiffany said.

"Valkyrie," Val said.

"Hmm?"

They hadn't gotten to that lesson yet, but deliberate precision ignorance seemed to be part of the cultural landscape that a proper lady was supposed to cultivate. You could nettle somebody by being stupid about things in a socially-acceptable way and nobody ever called you out on it. And there were about a thousand and one rules for how to act at tea time. As far as complex actions and interactions went, tea manners gave magic circles a run for their money.

"I used to like tea," Val said. She hoped there weren't rules for coffee-time that she didn't know about, because she needed something to get herself up in the morning.

"It's not in season," Miss Beaucinia noted. "That's why it's a bit stale… but I'll note that it's rude to point that out."

"That's right, Miss Beaucinia," Lady Nevine of Karvoth noted - she was their finishing instructor. "Why don't we all open our notebooks and write that down twenty times in perfect princess print: It is rude to point out flaws in my host's meal."

"What if your host has a cold and might want to know that her tea is, uh, stale?" Val asked.

"You may point it out discreetly after teatime, provided nobody else is within earshot, Miss Valkyrie," Lady Nevine said. "But you must give your host every opportunity to back out from the faux pas with dignity…"

Val checked her notes. A faux pas was when you made a silly mistake that nobody would care about in a thousand years, except people with courtly manners thought it was the end of the world. Or so her notes summarized. For instance, you always put your cutting knife on the right side of the plate at a fifteen degree angle, even though a third of the population were left-handed like Val and usually cut with their left hands. For that matter, until a few months ago, Val had mostly eaten with just her hands and her trusty spoon and she'd got by just fine. This, too, was a faux pas.

She liked dancing, though. It was a lot like fighting exercises. There were places you were supposed to step, body parts you were supposed to move, balance you were supposed to shift, and you had to be constantly aware of your partner. They had a few boys come in to help with their thirty minutes of dancing lessons each session - Val was unclear whether there was a boy's finishing class or if they were just age- and class-appropriate volunteers. She wasn't clear on why you couldn't just dance with another girl, either.

"Because it wouldn't be proper," was the only explanation she ever got out of Lady Nevine.

Val was good at dancing. Very good at dancing. Though, when she was holding hands with some smooth-palmed lordling boy, she always imagined it was Penny or Jasil she was dancing with, depending on which was more believable given the boy's frame. And sometimes, her partners made a misstep (Val never did)… and if they stumbled into something resembling combat contact, Val's instincts would kick in and she would flip the boy over her hip or, in one instance, drop to the ground and toss him over her shoulders using her feet as a booster. This was, Lady Nevine was clear to point out, very un-ladylike behavior.

"It's not very ladylike to get attacked," Val said.

"It's not," Lady Nevine agreed. So at least some things about etiquette made sense.

And then there was the issue with Val's magic classes at the temple. They'd gotten weird of late and it was no mystery why.

+++++

Val had her magic lessons three days a week after supper. On days when she didn't have her magic lessons, she alternated between practicing magic and resting, whichever she felt she needed most. Since she couldn't let Gus get better than her, it usually ended up being about fifty-fifty. On days when she did have magic lessons, she and the eleven other students in the septs converged at the Temple of Hale Jerob, where Priestes Oestel would appraise each student's progress and deliver a brief lesson before handing things off to three gotkosens, the sub-priests and -priestesses who assisted in the running of the Old Sudren temples. Two of the gotkosens were from other septs while the third and most junior of the three was also from Hale Jerob.

This junior among the gotkosens had been named only a month before Taagsnit, the night where Val had been initiated into the sept and received her Gift. New gotkosens were called greenspears for their first year, a rank roughly equivalent to an acolyte or assistant deacon in the Pale Order's hierarchy. Their greenspear, Levin, was most often called to assist with lessons because he was the most junior gotkosen and his senior fellows had more important things to do.

"It's really because I'm the best. Gotkosen Melliana can barely do anything beyond pyrokinesis," Levin said once.

And, Val had to admit, Melliana did go heavy on the pyrokinesis whenever it was her turn to run anything that involved a demonstration. But, like all of the gotkosens, Melliana had read an awful lot, both about magic and about other things.

For his part, Levin loved history. He always spoke about it, from the Eastern Sea Embargo, which hadn't ended until five years after the great war, to ancient lore steeped in myth. In Val's opinion, most of that stuff probably hadn't happened.

"It probably didn't happen like that, per se," Levin admitted. "But there's probably a kernel of truth to some of it. You just have to triangulate your sources to see where the kernels are…"

He was tall and slender and dark-skinned. In his dark robes, he stalked about the practice floor, like a jungle sphinx waiting to pounce. Only, instead of ripping you apart with razor-sharp claws, he would ask you questions that he knew you'd have trouble answering. At least if you hadn't done all of your studying, which Val always had.

She couldn't believe there'd been a time not so long ago when she'd have done anything to avoid sitting down with a book and learning about things… that was before she knew she'd have to compete with Gus to be the best student. Some of the second-years knew more, but none of them had a Gus to compete against, and so none of them were as good as Gus or Val. And Beni was pretty alright, too. His parents wanted him to get an apprenticeship as an apothecary or alchemist, which was pretty doable with his skill level.

"Val, what's the pattern matrix for shaping low pental flow?" Levin asked her.

A low pental flow was when you needed to make four shaping changes after your initial shaping, and the matrix determined how the patterning of the changes worked, since they had to be done in an exact pattern or your magic would collapse. For instance, a gust of wind where you controlled the direction, starting location, intensity, and timing would take four changes. That was considered intermediate by professional mages and just about impossible for somebody with two and a half months under her belt - but Val could do it.

Val nodded and drew out the spell pattern from her book that specified the matrix. She was pretty sure she'd got it exactly right.

"Very good - you can copy a pattern from a book. But that's not what I asked you, Val. Show me the pattern matrix."

That was an altogether different task, since it meant using an illumination spell to shape your magic in three dimensions, since the spell pattern that you represented in two-dimensions on paper was actually three-dimensional and the cross-section changed with the different parameters you set. It also required two additional changes to get right, and Val wasn't up to six changes.

She tried anyway, managing to get about a quarter of the thing out before losing the plot and stunning everybody in the room when the spell spun out of control with a blinding flash and a barely-audible pop.

"Not the worst effort I've ever seen," Levin said. "Did you know Queen Friyja, your ancient ancestor, was able to do a septal flow at age nine? Food for thought…"

"Yeah, but she had the Gift at two years by then," Val said. According to legend, the queen - to whom she, as improbable as it seemed, was distantly related - had received her Gift from the gods themselves at age seven and was besting centenarian mages by age ten. At age twelve and a half, Val's age, she'd become queen when both of her parents were assassinated. And at age fourteen, she led an army into battle to smash the villains who'd done it. Then she ruled two centuries before being slain by a traitor.

"Well… not slain." Levin shot Val a meaningful look. "Legend has it that she was turned into a lifeless statue by dark magic, but that the blood of her true heir will bring her back to life so she can reign once more."

"That means you, Val," Beni said.

"I know what it means," Val said. "But that's hogwash. Somebody would have found the statue by now if it existed, and how would a magic curse know whose blood was whose?"

"You're right - it doesn't seem possible with our magic," Levin agreed. "But what if our magic is incomplete? What if there are possible things that can't be done with Old Sudren? There are other magical languages… older languages… stranger languages. And while you think on that, I'd like Thadmus to show me proper pental flow. And please try not to blind us…"

So that sort of thing happened a lot. Levin would pick on Val as an excuse to bring up the exploits of the ancient Sudrian kings and queens. To the best of Val's knowledge, everybody had ancestors dating back to however long people had been around. But most of them didn't have history books written about them, and so Levin didn't single them out.

+++++

Val's fantasies had always been pretty prosaic. Ever since she was old enough to imagine being an adult, she'd been an orphan. She'd dreamed about having a family. She'd dreamed about getting an apprenticeship. She'd dreamed about having money and a nice dress and a little house near Dunsany Way, and inevitably she'd imagine walking through the flower-spangled park in the springtime with… Penny. In her fantasies, it had always been Penny. And Penny would look at Val and run her fingers through Val's hair and tell her that having her as a friend was better than having a sister. Those had been Val's pipe dream fantasies.

Now she dreamed bigger. She had no illusions that she would ever be the Empress of Awami, but now she knew that she was the sole descendant of the last queen of Sudria. That the blood of queens and kings ran through her veins. That she had been touched by Valkyrie herself and Gifted. It was enough to get a big head, if only in her dreams, and imagine herself as a conquering queen. As a beneficent queen. As a powerful sorceress-queen, her eyes ablaze with power, ready to wipe the scourge of the Pale Order off the face of the Earth. That sort of dream.

When she was around actual nobility, she didn't feel like a queen, obviously. The girls at finishing lessons only tolerated her because Mrs. Eatherfine, the dowager duchess, had personally requested that Val be included. And the duke was so far above her that he might as well have been one of the tapestries dangling from the palace nave.

"The duke requests your presence in his war room," the duke's messenger said.

War room? This was right at the end of one of her late afternoon finishing classes. It would soon be dark outside, and Val was about to object that she was going to be late for her early evening fighting classes. But a duke's request was not a request.

Instead, she said: "Lead the way."

The duke's 'war room' was just another fancy room in a palace of fancy rooms. It had a big glossy table in the center with all sorts of intricate patterns carved into the surface - though, obviously, they'd been glossed over in something hard and clear. There were maps and books by the dozen spread out over the table, and the duke stood over at one end pondering some map or the other. Two military officers with their golden epaulettes and ducal insignias stood to either side, and another dozen noblemen and noblewomen milled about, discussing things with great gravity.

The duke's messenger gave her a little nudge and then just left without announcing Val's presence. So she just stood near the entrance to the 'war room' and watched the great men and women of the duchy discuss matters of Import. They mentioned Wayfair and Boleares a lot. They mentioned calling up the home guard.

"Are you guys planning a war?" Val asked.

"What are you doing in here, my sweet?" one of the women asked.

"Guard! Get this child out of here!" one of the officers barked.

"Wait!" Duke Ansibald said. "Guard, please return to your post."

The guard saluted sharply and marched back out.

The duke strolled over to Val and put a possessive hand on her shoulder. "Lord General, this is Valkyrie Valicent-Vinzenno…" he said her name with the practiced ease of a man who'd repeated it at least a few times to get it right.

"Who?" the lord-general asked. That was the question Val would have expected.

"The young woman that the Regency Council and the Pale Order have going ape trying to get their hands on or, better yet, snuff out. You see, my friend Val has a very special pedigree. Will you please inform the lord general, Val?"

Val curtsied in a perfectly proper way, albeit a bit too late for propriety. "My lord, I am the sole inheritor of the ancient bloodline of the kings and queens of Sudria."

The lord general gasped. "My duke?"

"It's true," Ansibald said. "The Pale Order tested her twice themselves and came to that exact conclusion. Val is a remarkable young woman worthy of her lineage."

A noblewoman sidled up to the duke and whispered: "My lord… if this is true… and I'm sure it is… then this girl poses a grave threat to the legitimacy of your claim."

"I must agree, my lord," one of the officers said. "Is it even wise to… er… keep this girl around?" As if Val couldn't deduce that this was a poor euphemism for having her killed.

Ever one for dramatic entrances, the duke's mother, the dowager Duchess Hyacinth Eatherfine, chose that moment to storm into the war room, the jewels and bangles of her wardrobe clattering like slow-motion maracas. "She is not a threat," she said. "She is our greatest non-military tool against the Regency Council… think for a moment. For whom does the Regency Council of Boleares rule in the stead of? The long-vanished monarchs of Sudria, of course. And, tell me child, what have you signed a sworn affidavit attesting to?"

"A sworn what?" Val asked.

"Your contract, Val. What did you say?"

Val furrowed her brow to remember the verbiage of the contract. "Duke Ansibald is the lawful duke of Aurilicht and the rightful ruler of all Sudria," she said.

"And did you sign under duress?" Mrs. Eatherfine asked. "Did we make any threats or promises to make you sign the contract?"

Val made eye contact with the officer who didn't want Val around and frowned. "No. Duke Ansibald would be ten times the king as anybody in the Regency Council or in the Pale Order. Heck, he's ten times better than all of them combined. And I'll sign ten more contracts if it gets those bastards to stop terrorizing everyday folk."

"Well said, my dear," Mrs. Eatherfine said, and she pulled Val close to her, jewels worth many gold talents pressing against Val’s cheek. "Imagine your duke riding before his troops with the granddaughter of Friyja proclaiming his right. Val… what do you think about being Duke Ansibald’s standard bearer?"